Life is Like a Malt Shop
by Mallus
Summary: Jim's a dork, Spock puts up with him, bonding happens, then Deus Crackadrama Machina descends upon them both. Starts out funny, devolves into supernatural unhappiness, and I wish I could be more specific but that would spoil you. Slash as of chapter 6.
1. The Captain of the Football Team

**Title:** Life is Like a Malt Shop

**Rating:** K+ for cursing and preslash.

**Warning:** In this fic, you will find:  
>-Adorkable-teenage-girl!Jim!<br>-Sort-of-OOC!Spock!  
>-Plot whiplash!<br>-Cracky premise!  
>-Cliches!<br>-General implausibility in each and every respect!  
>-References to TOS, Harry Potter, and pasta!<br>-And, of course...SLASH! Because the day I write a fic without any slash is a sad, sad day, indeed!

**Summary:** Jim's a dork, Spock puts up with him, bonding happens, then Deus Crackadrama Machina descends upon them both. Written for the lulz and inspired by a kink meme prompt, but I don't want to say which one, since that will give away the plot. What little there is of it, anyway.

**A/N:** All chapters for this one will be short and sweet, and I am anticipating 4-6 chapters. I already have the second chapter written, and most of the third, and will be putting the second chapter up on May 8. This fic, um...might be part of the reason why Chapter 8 of TOB took so long to write. Maybe.

* * *

><p>—<strong>The Captain of the Football Team—<strong>

—

Sixteen months into the _Enterprise_'s first five-year mission, Spock _still_ hadn't warmed up to him.

It was true that there hadn't been any more Choking Incidents (for which Jim was _very_ grateful), and that there wasn't nearly as much open hostility between them as there had been before the _Narada_. But "nonhostile" wasn't nearly good enough, as far as Jim was concerned.

Spock was always so formal, so efficient, so..._Vulcan_. Most of the time, that was absolutely awesome, but sometimes—though Jim would never admit it, he had a reputation of stoic manliness to maintain—it made Jim feel a little lonely. There was this unnatural distance between them and he didn't know what to do about it.

Well, maybe the distance wasn't so unnatural, considering the Choking Incident, the Hoth Incident, and the multiple Hit On Uhura Incidents. And the Massage Oil Incident. And the Rigelian Fever Incident, of course, but Jim was still pretending that one never happened.

Old Spock (or, as Jim called him when he got frustrated with all that Wise Old Wizard inscrutability, Spockledore) had promised Jim an Epic Friendship. To be honest, even though they still had almost four more years to build a relationship (god that sounded girly), Jim felt a little bit cheated.

The problem was, they weren't spending enough time alone together. It's hard to become Epic Friends with a guy you never see outside conference room A, or the Bridge, or the mess hall, or the science labs—well, he actually saw Spock everywhere, come to think of it, but none of it was personal. And he just _knew_ that if he asked Spock outright to do something with him, he would look like some pathetic teenager with a crush (and no, he did not have a crush, he didn't like men that way, not that there was anything wrong with that). Then Spock would silently mock him with that eyebrow of his and reject him, and Jim would just have to carry on bravely while secretly wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

So Jim decided to approach the problem differently.

—

The next time he and Spock were both in the turbolift, it mysteriously malfunctioned.

Mysteriously, of course. Jim had no idea why. It was a good thing he had such a talented, easily-bribed chief engineer to fix things like that.

"Hey, Spock," he said brightly. "So, we're going to be stuck in here a while, huh?"

Spock didn't even look up from his PADD. "We would be, if I did not know that Mr. Scott prefers Ganymede Scotch to Doohan's Moon Whiskey."

The turbolift immediately started moving again.

—

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, _shit_.

That _really_ hurt.

"Bones," Jim tried to say, but his tongue had turned into sandpaper so it came out more like "Plums". "What happened?"

Bones growled somewhere in the vicinity of Jim's head. Jim tried to crack his eyes open, but the sudden stabbing bright light told him that was a very bad idea, so he closed his eyes again and waited for the pounding in his head to subside.

"You and that fool Vulcan of yours—" not his, Jim immediately thought, there are no possessive pronouns in their relationship, nope, completely platonic— "almost got yourselves killed in a rockslide down on that deathtrap of a planet. You've already been in here for three days, and I'm keeping you for at least another three, unless you fancy your limbs necrotizing and falling off."

"No," Jim said hastily, "that's fine, I'll stay. How's Spock? Was he hurt badly? Is he still in here?" Feeling hopeful, Jim tried to sit up and look around for Spock. Jim would sooner chew off his own arm than wish for an injured Spock, but if he and Spock were going to be stuck in here for three days...well, that was a wonderful opportunity to bond over their near-death experience and become Epic Friends, wasn't it?

"He's fine now, he's already gone, thanks to that green blood. You both nearly died, and he was worse off than you because of _course_ he tried to jump in front of the boulder—a _boulder_, how does he think jumping is gonna—well, nevermind, the short end of it is that he healed up about twice as fast as you. I let him out of here about an hour ago."

"What? Why did he try to jump in front of it?" That's when Jim remembered: yeah, there had been this huge boulder, just crashing towards him out of nowhere, then a flash of blue and, and, oh, fuck, it was his fault that Spock got hurt.

"His goddamn Christ complex, that's why. Doesn't know the value of his own life."

Jim tried to cover up how guilty he felt with a joke as Bones pulled some mysterious Tool of Healing out of the medical cart. "I think there's something just a little blasphemous about the phrase 'goddamn Christ complex', Bones. I'll be sure to remember your immortal soul in my prayers later—_what the hell does that thing do_?"

"Shut up and lie back, you boulder-blind idiot. This won't hurt a bit and it'll be over in a second."

It hurt considerably and it took nearly three minutes.

—

The day after he got out of sickbay, Jim decided, would be the perfect time to implement Operation Epic Friendship: Phase 2. His cunning plan consisted of asking Spock to deliver one of his thesis-length reports in person, instead of electronically as per usual.

Well, maybe not "cunning" so much as "lame, but it's the only thing Jim can think of". At least they'd be having a conversation alone, right? He'd find some way to turn it into a bonding activity. Jim had all his best ideas in the moment, anyway.

At 0800 hours, Jim went to his desk and switched to Spock's comm channel (and no, he was not nervous, thank you very much, he was just asking for a report from his First Officer, not asking the captain of the football team to get malts at Joe's diner after school—wait, something went very wrong with that metaphor—whatever, damn it).

"Captain Kirk to Commander Spock."

"Spock here, Captain. What is it?"

"This time, the—" Well, the bimonthly science report usually went a good fifty pages— " 'Report on the Efficiency and Efficacy of Science Department Personnel' should be delivered in person instead of by ship's mail. I want to go over it in briefing room C at 0930."

"Of course, Captain." There was a pause. "May I ask why?"

"We have investigated several more spatial anomalies than usual in the past two months; in light of the increased load on the science department, I wanted to take a more active role in its supervision." _Beautiful_ answer, Jim. Totally Captainly. If it were physically possible, Jim would kiss his brain for coming up with that.

"You do not believe the science department can handle the additional work under my management?"

"No, of course not, Spock! You just shouldn't have to do it all yourself, that's all—you work pretty hard—" (great, now Jim sounded completely flustered—)

"Captain, I know you have complete confidence in my ability to manage the science department. The question was intended to be an attempt at humor."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Right."

"I will have Lieutenant Orzo report to you in briefing room C at 0930. Is that all, Captain?"

"Actually, I'd prefer it if, er, you were the one to deliver the report. In person. To me."

Dead silence.

(shit, shit, _shit_, what the hell was that horrible thing that just crawled out of his mouth and died, that sounded so pathetic, _fuck_ he was just going to die, right here, right now)

"I see," Spock said finally, and Jim could just _hear_ Spock's eyebrow crawling up his forehead. "Captain, you do know that if you wish to spend more time with me, all you have to do is ask?"

"...of course I know that."

"Naturally."

"And forget what I said about the report."

"I am incapable of voluntarily erasing my own memory, Captain."

"...right. Well. Go, um, find something to experiment on. Kirk out."


	2. In Which Bishops Are Dumb

**Rating: **K+ for cursing and preslash.

**A/N:** Hehehehehe...should I put a cliffhanger warning or not? I don't think I should. After all, I want you to be completely unprepared for it. :P All possible thanks and adulation to And I Am Undone, who is the most awesome beta everrrrr.

By the way! This is the chapter where the plot starts whiplashing. TOTAL TONE CHANGE AHOY.

Chapter 3 goes up on the 14th.

* * *

><p><strong>—In Which Bishops Are Dumb—<strong>

****—**  
><strong>

Thirty-six hours later, Jim found himself staring at a knight on a chessboard and wishing it could give him advice.

It was that knight that was the problem. Jim's current strategy involved getting his knight to the second attack board so it could threaten Spock's king. Before he could get his knight to the second attack board, Jim had to move his rook off. The way to move his rook off was to eliminate Spock's bishop. But the only piece capable of eliminating Spock's bishop right now was Jim's knight, and that particular move required Jim to get his knight to the second attack board.

Ugh.

Jim picked up the knight and twirled it between his fingers distractedly. If he didn't move his knight now, the obvious move for Spock to make on the next turn would be to take it with his rook: it was move the knight, or lose the knight.

"So," Jim said, stalling for time. "I was truly hurt that you didn't come to visit me in sickbay during my convalescence, Spock. Truly." A solution suddenly popped into his brain; as he deliberately set his knight in the attack line of Spock's queen, he continued, "But despite my deep emotional trauma, I forgive you. After all, it's only logical that you resent me for raining boulders on your head."

Spock, who had been concentrating on the board, looked up; his eyebrow shot up so quickly Jim was surprised Spock hadn't sprained it. "I do not resent you, Captain. It was impossible for you to react in time to prevent either of us from being injured."

"Well then, why didn't you visit? You're my favorite First Officer, you know," Jim teased. This whole bonding thing wasn't nearly as hard (no, not like _that_, all dirty minds please shut up now, okay) as he thought it would be.

Spock looked back down at the board. "I...did not think it would be beneficial to you to disturb your recovery period." His hand moved toward—his bishop?

Why would he move his bishop? Jim watched Spock's hand, fascinated—but then the movement was aborted, almost as if Spock had suddenly realized Jim was watching him.

He looked up at Spock. "No, go on, what were you going to do?"

"Nothing sensible, Captain. I was not thinking clearly about the game." Spock reached for his rook instead, almost too casually.

"You're a terrible liar, Spock." Jim grinned. "You always think clearly. Come on, you were going to move your bishop. Why?"

Without answering, Spock placed his rook precisely where Jim had expected him to place it.

Huh.

"You're throwing the game."

"To 'throw' a game means to lose on purpose. Since I am currently in the better strategic position—"

"Don't give me that, Spock. You've been making exactly the moves I thought you would make for the entire game." Jim frowned, not even pretending that he was still paying attention to the board. "Well, not exactly, or you wouldn't be winning. But you've been playing the way I expected you to play."

"The obvious answer to that is that your expectations were correct." Spock did not meet his eyes.

"I don't buy that for a second."

"It is the most logical answer."

"No, it's not." There was a long silence, which only confirmed Jim's suspicions; obviously, something weird was going on, or Spock wouldn't be sitting over there pretending Vulcans didn't have to breathe or blink.

According to Old Spock, in the original universe, Spock had been better than Jim at chess, but Jim's style had been chaotic enough that he beat Spock almost as often as vice versa. Yet in this universe, Spock was so far out of Jim's league that he was winning right now, even though he was throwing the game. Spock's life in this universe had been almost identical to his life in the original universe until the _Narada_; therefore, whatever had changed his chess abilities had probably happened during the past sixteen months.

"Who is it?" Jim asked.

"Who is who, Captain?" Spock's face was completely shuttered.

"You know who, don't play dumb. Who have you been playing during the past sixteen months who's supernaturally—" Jim had been about to say "supernaturally good at chess"; but as soon as he said "supernaturally", Spock blinked.

"What, are you playing chess with a ghost or something?" Jim laughed—but Spock didn't.

"Fascinating," he said quietly.

"What is?" Jim said, expecting Spock to say, "How easy it is for you to infer ridiculous ideas from simple absent-mindedness."

"How easy it was for you to deduce almost the entire truth based upon nothing more than a bishop and my near-nonexistent body language."

"Spock, that's bullshit. You can't be playing chess with a ghost. For one thing, we don't have any on the crew roster." Jim smirked, but he had a bad feeling about this, as if Bones had left one of those big sucker things turned on inside his liver or something and it was now trying to suck out all his bile.

In other words, it was a very, very bad feeling, indeed.

Spock ignored the joke (well, mostly—he did kick his eyebrow up a notch) and said, "Do you know how many times you have almost died on this mission?"

"I don't know. Ten or fifteen?"

"Twenty-six times, Jim." (first name basis? YES. SCORE. Jim took a moment to himself to declare Operation: Epic Friendship successful beyond his wildest dreams.)

"I know it's not my ghost you're playing with. For one thing, my ghost wouldn't be that good at chess," he said, knowing he was grinning like some psycho and not caring one bit.

For what seemed like an eternity, Spock was silent. Finally, he said, "I would prefer not to tell you, Captain, if that is acceptable. It could be...dangerous for you to know. I am not sure."

Well, _that_ wasn't about to make him die of curiosity.

"Will you just tell me when the last time you played was?"

Spock said nothing. And then Jim had an idea: if he worded the question a little differently and made it sound like it was still the same question—

"Come on, Spock. Who was the last person you played?" Jim asked, pretending to get frustrated.

"Ensign Chekov, ten days ago," Spock said immediately, almost automatically—and then he realized what he had just done and he actually _blushed_, and it was the most a-fucking-dorable thing Jim had ever seen (no, _not like that_—actually, oh fuck it, maybe just a little bit like that.)

He beamed at Spock. "It's a bitch having to tell the truth all the time, isn't it? Just spill the beans, Spock, I know practically all of it already. For the past sixteen months, you've been playing chess with some kind of ghost entity, the ghost entity is an absolute beast at it, you've played chess with it within the last ten days, and it has something to do with my multiple near death experiences."

Spock just stared at him.

"Well, if you won't tell me, will you play normally, then? Just show me how good beating Mr. Supernatural has made you. I promise I won't tell anybody," Jim said with his most winning smile.

"...Very well."

Three moves later, Jim was staring at the board in disbelief. He had no idea how it happened, but Spock had put him in checkmate.

"Jesus, Spock. The board wasn't even set up so that was possible."

"Evidently it was, as I did not make any illegal moves during play," Spock pointed out dryly.

"No, it wasn't, I _know_ it wasn't. How the hell..." Jim started to say, but then what he had said earlier _clicked_.

For the past sixteen months, Spock had been playing chess with some kind of ghost entity. Spock had played chess with the entity within the last ten days. It had something to do with Jim's multiple near death experiences.

Jim knew how that board had been set up. Spock hadn't done anything outside the rules—but checkmate in three moves had been literally impossible at that point.

Then there was the fact that Jim almost died eight days ago under a boulder, but didn't.

In fact, Spock knew exactly how many times Jim had almost died during the course of this mission.

"...oh fuck, you can't be serious, you've _got_ to be fucking with me."

Because Jim had just figured it out, and it was impossible, and it wasn't really that funny any more, and he wished to God he'd never seen that bishop because _nobody_ was that good an actor, except Spock _had_ to be that good an actor because this _had_ to be a joke.

"Bones put you up to this, didn't he?" Jim said, but he knew that Bones could never have persuaded Spock to pull something like this.

Spock looked down at the board and started speaking in that disinterested teaching voice of his, like he was giving some lecture on the applications of alternate-order algebra instead of taking Jim's entire worldview and smashing it into tiny little pieces.

"The first time it happened was during the second month of our mission, when diplomatic relations between the Moril colony on Iota IV and the Federation broke down. You were hit by the Moril energy weapon."

Jim gathered himself enough to remember that mission. "Spock, I was only almost hit. It was a close shave, but it went right over my head. You were the one who got hit, remember?"

"No, Captain. You were hit, as well. Let me explain—"


	3. The Horse Shaped Ones

**Rating: **K+ for cursing and preslash.

**A/N:** I BET YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING, DID YOU? DID YOU? Also: now you know why I couldn't tell you the prompt. Also: DEATH FROM DISCWORLD not-my-character-disclaimer (although there are some differences). I couldn't figure out how to make do small caps, though, so you'll just have to pretend.

Chapter 4 goes up on the 21st.

* * *

><p><strong>—The Horse-Shaped Ones—<strong>

****—**  
><strong>

The first time it happened, Spock thought it was merely a byproduct of head injury. He had just received a shot to the head from an energy weapon of unknown origin, and subjective time dilation was a known humanoid response to head trauma. So when the chaos of the firefight between the Moril and the landing party froze, and time ceased its familiar flow forward, he was not alarmed.

It was only when a faceless gray figure stepped out of a hole in the air that he knew this was no hallucination. It wore (or its body was composed of, it was unclear which) wispy dark shadows that trailed behind it, slowly twisting as the fumes of a fog would, and it was approximately two meters tall. Spock was unable to name a more precise figure because the figure's height seemed to fluctuate; when he looked down, he saw that the figure did not actually make contact with the ground as it traveled.

—

"You mean it floated."

"I believe that is what I said. It carried—"

—

It carried a weapon with a curving blade and a long wooden handle, and it seemed unaffected by the time dilation. It was approaching the Captain, who was frozen in a defensive posture above Spock, phaser leveled at the Moril responsible for Spock's injury.

And—though Spock did not share this with the Captain—it smelled like death.

Spock quickly rose from the ground, where he had been lying; even though seconds before he had been incapacitated by the energy weapon, he was now unaffected (although the strangeness of this did not strike him until some time later). He interposed himself between the gray figure and the Captain.

"I am Spock, first officer of the Federation starship _Enterprise_. Please state your identity."

—

"_Spock_. Are you telling me you gave the_ Grim Reaper _the 'who goes there' routine?"

"That is correct Starfleet procedure, Captain."

—

The figure turned its faceless head towards Spock. **"It has been long since one of your kind could see me; but then, I suppose you would say that you are not one of their kind..."**

"State your identity and your business with Captain Kirk." Spock drew his phaser and trained it on the figure.

**"James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-seven years and two hundred four days of life; died this day, named by your people as 2260.60. It is already done." **

Despite his better judgement, Spock turned his back to the figure for a moment to look at the Captain.

"Captain Kirk is in excellent health, or will be as soon as you return time to its normal state. Your dates are in error."

It cocked its head to the side, giving the impression of dark amusement.** "Are they, Spock, first officer of the Federation starship **_**Enterprise**_**? Look again."**

Spock did.

Frozen in the air was an energy beam, a long smudge of phosphor green fired from a Moril weapon mere milliseconds before. It was still 4.38 meters away from the Captain, but if time started passing again, it would be impossible to get the Captain out of its path quickly enough. Spock tried to push the Captain to the side, but his effort was in vain; the Captain did not move.

**"Your true body is trapped in time; it is only your mind which remains active, due to your telepathy. You cannot alter the physical world with a mental projection." **It extended a skeletal hand toward the Captain. **"While this exchange is amusing, I have been seen by telepathic humans before. I came to take, and the time has come."**

The hand did not move, yet Spock could feel something strange in the universe _twisting_—and time resumed.

Immediately, sound returned to the world with a roar. The violent chaos of the firefight broke out above Spock, who experienced a nauseating wave of vertigo as he abruptly found himself lying on the ground again.

He looked up just in time to see the neon beam strike the Captain squarely in the forehead. His body fell in a graceful arc toward the ground, and though all the rest of the world flew past at the usual speed, it seemed to take days for the Captain to collapse on the red soil of Iota IV.

Time stopped, and Spock was once more standing between the figure and the Captain.

**"You have objected to his death. Do you wish to challenge?"**

"I said nothing," said Spock, and his voice remained steady. "There was not enough time to say anything."

**"You said nothing, but your mind objects. Look at where you stand, Spock, first officer—between your Captain and Death. I ask again, do you wish to challenge?"**

"Yes."

—

The Captain, who was paying much more attention now than he did to any of Spock's more normal reports, made a comment for the first time in three minutes.

"You would challenge Death for any of us, wouldn't you?"

"Of course," Spock said. "Any being who values the lives of others would do the same, even for a stranger. It is nothing special."

"I suppose it isn't..." said the Captain, looking disappointed.

Spock did not smile, and continued.

—

**"Name the game."**

"Excuse me?"

**"The game we play is chosen by the challenger. You are the challenger. Choose."**

"I see." How arbitrary. Spock thought for a moment; it would be futile to attempt to determine which game a being with the ability to stop time would be least likely to win, so Spock simply chose the game he was best at. "I challenge you to a game of chess."

**"Chess...that's the one with the squares and the priests, isn't it?" **A chess table—for traditional chess—condensed out of the air, complete with two chairs for two opponents.

"The 'priests' are called bishops; but that is not quite the game I mean. I should have specified. I challenge you to a game of three-dimensional chess."

**"Ah."** The chessboard shimmered foggily for a moment, then reappeared in its three-dimensional form. Death sat down on black's side, and Spock sat down behind the white. It turned its head down to look at the board, then looked back at Spock. **"I am afraid I do not know how to play this kind."**

—

"Are you _serious._"

"I am always serious, so I assume that is a rhetorical question meant to express incredulity. I was quite surprised, myself; but if its ignorance was genuine—"

—

If its ignorance was genuine, then Spock's task was much easier than he had anticipated.

"The movements of most of the pieces are similar to their movements in the traditional game; however, the board is divided into different levels called attack boards. The king and queen each start on separate attack boards..."

[Intermission]

"...ends in checkmate, when there are no moves available to your opponent that can prevent the capture of their king," Spock finished seven minutes later.

For several seconds, Death stared at the board; then it reached forward and tapped a piece with a bony finger.

**"Remind me again,"** it said, **"how the little horse-shaped ones move." **

Spock won in eight moves.

—

"Captain, if you do not stop laughing within the next nineteen seconds, your blood-oxygen levels will become low enough to inhibit brain function."

"Spock—I'm fine—just—give me a second, over here—"

Spock waited.

Presently, the Captain said, "So, why can you see Death, and nobody else? Come to think of it, why can't Spockle—er, I mean, Ambassador Spock see Death? I'm sure he would have mentioned it at some point, that's probably the biggest scientific discovery since...hell, since _ever_."

"Indeed. I asked Death those questions at our second, third, and fourth games. The answer to the first is that only telepathic humans are capable of seeing Death, and I am just human enough to be included in that group. However, there are very few telepathic humans, and those few encounters are typically discounted as hallucinations. As for Ambassador Spock, I do not know. Part of being human is identifying as human; perhaps, because of my mother's premature death, I identify more with humanity than he does. We can only guess."

"Right." The Captain rubbed his forehead. "So I guess, by 'second, third, and fourth games', you mean Gamma Trianguli VI. That was, what, the third month?"

"You are correct."


	4. In Soviet Russia, Death Cheats You

**Rating:** K+ for preslash and, um...really bad innuendo?

**A/N:** Hehehe. Turians. The first contact war. I am such a nerd.

**SPECIAL NOTICE:** I will be out of town for my cousin's wedding from the 25th through the 31st, which means I will probably be unable to write or post new chapters for that period. If I get a chance to write, and I have access to ff dot net, I'll post Chapter 5 on the 28th. If I can write, but do not have internet access, Chapter 5 is going up on June 1st. If I can't write, and writing Chapter 5 has to wait until I get back, then Chapter 5 is going up on June 5th. If I have a vision of the Virgin Mary and decide to become a nun, Chapter 5 will probably never be completed.

I mean—er, what was I saying?

* * *

><p>—<strong>In Soviet Russia, Death Cheats You—<br>or**  
>—<strong>Cheating Death Was Inwented In Russia—<br>or**  
>—<strong>Don't Get Excited, There's No Chekov In This Chapter, Despite the Misleading Title—<br>(Whichever You Prefer)**

—

The second time it happened was Spock's fault. If he had not been so unaware—but it did not matter any more.

Spock had been with Dr. McCoy, discussing the sappelin-like substance secreted by the flower that killed Hendorff. Unknown to him, he and the doctor had been standing in front of another of the same plant. It had been about to launch its deadly thorns against them when the Captain noticed the flower turn, shouted, and pushed Spock and the doctor to the ground.

Except only Spock fell to the ground; the doctor remained frozen in midair.

Spock rose, brushed the mentally projected dirt from his mentally projected uniform, and looked around for a hole in the air and/or an anthropomorphic personification of Death. He was not disappointed.

**"****James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-seven years and two hundred twenty-nine days of life; died this day, named by your people as 2260.67. It is already done." **Death paused, its voice leaving echoes like a granite contrabass. **"****I did not expect to see you again, Spock, first officer. You know why I am here."**

Spock glanced at the Captain. Time had caught him just as the thorns struck his chest, directly above his heart; if Spock, whose heart was situated in his right side, had been the one to take the thorns, perhaps the poison—

He stopped that thought immediately. Kaiidth; what was, was.

"I see that when the Captain pushed the doctor and myself out of the way of the plant, he took the thorns himself; presumably, you have come to take his life again."

**"Presumably."**

"It is likely that I hit my head when I fell to the ground and am hallucinating due to the injury, as I did last time."

**"Quite likely."**

"Any choices I make within the hallucination can have no effect upon reality."

**"Of course not."**

"Whether I challenge you or not can have no effect upon the Captain's life. The idea is ridiculous."

**"Very much so."**

"Nevertheless, there is a 0.00175% chance that this encounter is actually taking place. It would be unwise of me to risk the Captain's life upon even such a small chance; therefore, I am obligated to challenge you."

**"It is only logical."**

"Thank you. I name three-dimensional chess as the challenge."

**"Naturally."**

Death summoned the board. Spock won in ten moves.

Dr. McCoy said afterward that he couldn't understand why the thorns had been fatal for Hendorff, but not for the Captain; he ascribed the Captain's survival to "being too damn stupid to know when something's supposed to be lethal."

That statement would have been more appropriate if it had been applied to Spock.

—

The third time it happened, Spock nearly prevented it. A sudden, strange lightning storm had sprung up over the jungle; unfortunately, the Captain who was standing in a relatively clear area, did not hear Spock's warning over the thunder. Spock was too far distant to do what the Captain had done earlier and push him out of the way. But he tried anyway—and so, when lightning struck the Captain, and the shock caused every muscle in his body to tense simultaneously, Spock was close enough to see his jaw jump, close enough to see the Captain's red, human blood trickle from his mouth when he bit his own tongue.

He was also close enough to see the trail of blood freeze, like a streak of old red paint upon the Captain's chin.

**"****James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-seven years and two hundred twenty-nine days of life; died this day, named by your people as 2260.67. It is already done."**

Without turning around, he said, "I was quite close to the discharge. Large electric shocks produce abnormal brain activity in many humanoid species."

**"Your kind is quite fragile in that respect."**

"However, as before, it would be prudent to behave as if this hallucination is real, though the probability is small."

**"Flawlessly reasoned."**

"I challenge you. I name three-dimensional chess as the challenge."

**"Of course you do."**

Again, Death summoned the board. Spock won in eleven moves, and no one wondered how a shock large enough to cause the Captain to nearly bite through his tongue had left no burns.

—

The fourth time it happened, Spock did not bother with rationalizations. He had not been anywhere near the force field when the Captain encountered it; in fact, he had not even been looking at him.

—

"That's true, you weren't. It was kind of weird, I thought you were avoiding me. Not like I want you to watch me all the time or something," said the Captain hastily.

"It was not intentional. It was—difficult to look at you."

"Really?" He leaned forward over the forgotten chessboard, blue eyes wide and curious. "What d'you mean, Spock? Did I have something funny on my face?" The Captain grinned.

"...As a matter of fact, there was still blood upon your chin," Spock said stiffly. He stared fixedly at a point above the Captain's head; and because of this, he missed what happened next.

"Oh. What—_oh_." The Captain turned red, and then, strangely, he grinned. For a full four seconds, his face was transformed into something brilliant.

—

Though Spock had been busy taking readings from the native flora, he was still listening to the Captain.

"Mallory, go scout around that ro—" The Captain's voice abruptly cut out.

Spock straightened up from the plant he had been examining. Its leaves had just stopped swaying in the breeze.

He turned around—and there stood Death's billowing black form next to the Captain, whose body hung above the ground like an insect in amber. Evidently he had just been thrown into the air by some unknown force.

**"****James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-seven years and two hundred twenty-nine days of life; died this day**—**" **

"What was it this time?" Spock interrupted.

**"**—**named by your people as 2260.67. It is already done." **Death paused. **"You would do well to remember, Spock, first officer, who holds the power in your hallucinations."**

Spock sighed. "I challenge you. I name three-dimensional chess as the challenge. In addition, should I win, I request additional information upon the nature of these encounters."

**"That is your right."**

It took fourteen moves this time. Before checkmate, Death managed to take Spock's white bishop and two of his pawns, though Spock could not tell how.

—

Though Spock asked Death many questions after his victory, he did not ask why he did not see Death when Hendorff was killed.

Spock had not been lying when he told the Captain he would do the same for anyone; that had been perfectly true. Anyone who valued life would be willing to play a simple game against an inexperienced opponent to preserve it, even if that opponent could bend the fabric of space and time.

But Spock had not seen Death come for Hendorff. He only saw Death when it came for the Captain.

—

The ninth time it happened was in the sixth month of their mission.

Before the _Narada_ was destroyed, Nero had contacted his wife's paternal family. The fact that she would not be born for more than one hundred years did not matter to them; the fact that the Spock of this universe had nothing to do with her death was irrelevant: as far as they were concerned, Spock had killed one of their own, and so he had to die.

Nero's wife's paternal family was a family of chemists.

It was unfortunate for them, then, that the Captain tried Spock's turian ale before Spock did.

—

"I remember that stuff," the Captain muttered distractedly. "It was pretty good. Tasted a little like snake spit, though..."

Despite his flippant words, the Captain had not moved in any way for the past twenty-six minutes, and there were deep lines set around his mouth.

Spock disregarded this, and continued.

—

The diplomatic team, which consisted of the Captain, Lt. Uhura, Lt. McGivers, Lt. Gardener, and Spock, had all been seated around a circular table, along with two turian Primarchs and three turian scientists. Lt. Uhura was deep in conversation with the linguist Lantam, discussing turian name theory, Lt. McGivers was hanging onto every word of the charismatic Primarch Eriax, Lt. Gardener was telling the two turian biologists about her first childhood freezing, and the Captain was 'talking shop' with Primarch Nehrkil.

"It's a good thing our first contact wasn't with you guys," he said to the Primarch. "There might have been a war. As it is, I think we could have done a lot worse than the Vulcans." He looked at Spock, who sat next to him, and winked. "Those guys really know how to make first contact, if you know what I mean."

Primarch Nehrkil seemed to find this statement hilarious. While the Primarch roared his laughter, the Captain leaned over to Spock.

"Can I have some of your ale? I'm all out," he said, and grinned.

"I have no use for it, Captain," he heard himself say, as if he had no control over his own mouth. A strange, cold, twisting feeling came over him as the Captain reached for his ale, and 0.004 seconds before it happened, Spock knew the glass would freeze against his lips—

And it did.

"It was poisoned," he said softly to himself.

**"James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-seven years and three hundred fifty-three days of life; died this day, named by your people as 2260.93. It is already done."**

"You always say it is already done," said Spock, not looking behind him. "Yet it never is."

**"Every beginning holds its own end, Spock, first officer."**

"Your words are trite and unoriginal."

**"That does not mean they are not true."**

Spock rose from his seat and turned. Death had already summoned the chess table, but he spoke the words anyway, for by now he knew that form required them.

"I challenge you. I name three-dimensional chess as the challenge."

This time, it took 42 moves and the sacrifice of five pawns, a knight, and both rooks to defeat Death. If Death had moved its white bishop just one more square**—**

It was a fool's mistake. Spock got the distinct impression that Death had made it on purpose.


	5. Spock Does Not Have An Oedipus Complex

**Rating:** Fifth verse, same as the first.

**A/N:** OMG GUYS LOST TRACK OF TIME but I'm here now and nobody else is getting married in the foreseeable future so we are back on schedule. And Chapter 6 is going up on the 10th, so that should make up for the lateness of this one, maybe?

Also: Did I seriously say this would be 4-6 chapters long? Did I, really? Ha ha, ha, haha, _ha ha ha_.

* * *

><p>—<strong>Spock Does Not Have An Oedipus Complex<strong>—

—

The fifteenth time it happened was eleven minutes after the fourteenth time, four hours fifty-six minutes after the thirteenth time, five hours eighteen minutes after the twelfth time, thirty-nine hours twenty-seven minutes after the eleventh time, fifty-two hours forty-three minutes after the tenth time, seventy-five hours thirty-eight minutes after Spock had surrendered the _Enterprise_ to a Romulan warbird, seventy-five hours thirty-nine minutes after Spock assumed command of the _Enterprise_ because the Captain was unfit for duty, and two hundred twenty-two hours exactly since the last time Spock slept.

This was because, two hundred twenty-two hours ago, the Captain had received classified orders from Starfleet Command to obtain an experimental Romulan cloaking device.

The Captain had been authorized to inform only his first officer of these orders. Together, the Captain and Spock had devised an elaborate, dangerous plan to obtain the device which involved Spock's apparent defection and the Captain impersonating a Romulan.

The problem with elaborate plans is that there are many ways for them to fail.

"The right of statement must be observed," said the Commander, his lined face kept carefully blank.

"But sir," his second hissed, "they'll only use it to—"

"The right of statement, Subcommander Charvanek, must be observed," the Commander repeated, casting an unreadable glance at her. A fleeting expression of satisfaction passed over her face.

That did not bode well.

Spock could tell that the Captain had caught it, as well, for his eyes flickered back and forth between the Commander and his second; but there was nothing to be done, so he proceeded with the plan. He cleared his throat—a little more theatrically than was strictly necessary, perhaps—and began his statement.

"As Captain of the Federation's flagship, I have a duty to carry out any and all orders given to me by Starfleet command—_ukf_."

Without warning, Subcommander Charvanek had struck the Captain's throat, a lightning-fast right-handed chop that left him temporarily unable to speak. The Commander continued as if nothing had happened.

"Short and appropriate: a claim of identity and a declaration of duty. I approve. Charvanek, you have the honor."

The cold, twisting feeling, abhorrently familiar to him now, shot through Spock, but he ignored it. He could stop it. It did not have to happen. It had taken 57 moves last time—_it did not have to happen—_

"No," he said helplessly, even as Charvanek raised her phaser. "His statement is incomplete. It is dishonorable to tamper with—allow him to catch his breath—"

The Commander looked at him, eyes cold. "The statement was not tampered with, Commander Spock. I am insulted that you would even suggest such a thing."

And Charvanek shot the Captain squarely in the chest.

It had happened. It had actually happened. And as Spock watched the air slowly tear itself apart, as the figure he had come to dread stepped through the patch of nothing, he could not bring himself to think, or plan, or feel anything but numb disbelief.

Eleven minutes ago, it had taken fifty-seven moves to keep his Captain.

And Spock had not slept in two hundred twenty-two hours.

—

Spock paused in his narrative.

"Well?" demanded the Captain, who had leaned so far toward Spock that he was in danger of falling out of his seat. "What happened next?"

"You mean, did I win the match?" Spock asked drily.

"Of course you won, I'm here, aren't I—oh."

—

Death played conservatively, which Spock would have found mystifying, if he hadn't wrapped himself so deeply in the game that he could not think except in squares of black and white. Spock was exhausted, vulnerable, desperate, an easy target—yet he only lost a rook and three pawns.

It took seventy moves.

—

"At that point, it became clear that I could not continue to rely on my own native ability. So, in the seventh month of our mission, I bought the best chess computer available on the market, made some improvements of my own, and began playing against it every night after alpha shift ended."

—

He had bought a chess computer—the best one available, programmed by Dr. Daystrom himself—and in the beginning, it had beaten him every single time. But then Spock started to beat the computer, and that was a problem. The only way for Spock to improve his game was to play an opponent with greater skill; therefore, the more he improved, the more useless the computer became to him. So every time Spock beat the computer, he would modify it, and for a little while after, the computer would again be the better player.

The first time he won against it, the changes he made were simple: a streamlining of the generator module, an expansion of the computer's game database.

By the eighth victory, Spock was completely overhauling the computer at every win. For all intents and purposes, he had to rebuild the computer every time he beat it.

After the twelfth time, Spock won no matter what modifications he made.

—

Spock had been narrating to the ceiling; finally he looked down at the Captain, and the intensity of the blue gaze that met him was almost physical.

Time stretched around them like a bubble.

"What did Uhura think of your new obsession?" the Captain finally asked, though that didn't seem to be what he really wanted to say.

"Lieutenant Uhura had no opinion, as she did not know. We had no romantic connection at that time."

"I didn't realize you two split so early in the mission."

"We ended our relationship four days after the _Enterprise_ left Earth."

The Captain leaned forward even further at that, eyes wide with interest. "Can I ask why, or is that a secret?"

"She reminded me of my mother," Spock said shortly.

—

Nyota Uhura knew almost as many languages as his mother did—had.

Nyota Uhura knew how to make plomeek soup with just a pinch of t'lot, so little Spock almost couldn't taste it but enough that he knew it was there. That was how his mother made it; in fact, she learned to make it that way _because_ that was how his mother made it.

Nyota Uhura loved deserts. She said that in a desert, the sky always looked higher up, and yes, Spock, (here she laughed), she knows it's not actually higher, it just looked that way to her.

Nyota Uhura loved to wear orange, and yes, Spock, she knows it's just a wavelength of light, but some wavelengths are beautiful and others she wouldn't be caught dead in (here she wrinkled her nose and, because she was touching his neck when she thought of it, he saw a flash of lavender).

A fall from a sandstone cliff into the center of a crumbling planet would unquestionably be fatal for Nyota Uhura.

Nyota Uhura reminded Spock of his mother.

—

"Spock, this will be the fourth practice in a row that you've missed." She stood in the doorway of his room, arms folded across her chest.

"I regret not being able to participate, but I am occupied tonight."

"You're always 'occupied'," she sighed, and shifted to lean against the frame of the door. Spock discreetly adjusted his own stance so that she could not see what was in his room. "Does this have anything to do with us? If you're avoiding practice because of me, I understand. I'd just like it if you told me. You're half our string section, you know."

"It is not because of you. There is simply a project which has required much of my attention lately."

She looked at him suspiciously, but all she said was, "If you ever want to talk about this mysterious project..."

"I appreciate the offer, but I do not wish to discuss it."

"Well, when you think you can tear yourself away for an hour or two, tell me. Maybe then I can arrange a practice that the best Vulcan lutist on the Enterprise will actually attend."

"I am the only Vulcan lutist on the Enterprise."

"It's an old human joke, Spock." She smiled and left. The door hissed shut. Spock turned around, and reflected on how fortunate it was that Nyota had not stayed longer. She would have expected him to invite her in, and he would not have been able to oblige, because the entirety of his desk and a respectable portion of the floor around it were covered in computer components.

—

Spock didn't tell the Captain any of this, but he could infer enough of the truth on his own.

"...Oh," he said, and looked away. "Sorry about that, Spock."

"About my mother, or about Lieutenant Uhura?"

"Both of them, together," the Captain said, gesturing energetically, if wastefully, in the air. "Your planet, your mother, your ex-girlfriend, your hideous hyperdimensional chess partner, how I've unwittingly died on you twenty-six times, the whole thing."

"Several of those items are only loosely related to one another, Captain, and thus cannot be called a 'whole thing'."

"Just the same..." The Captain rubbed his forehead with one hand. "You've been through a lot of crap, Spock, and I know I've said this before, but I should say it again, so I will. If you ever want to talk about any of this, I'm your Captain, and you should let me help you, and that's an order."

The silence which followed that statement was awkward, but somehow not uncomfortable.

—

James Kirk was only fluent in Standard, but he could curse in more languages than Nyota Uhura.

James Kirk was probably allergic to plomeeks, and had only ever cooked using a replicator.

James Kirk loved space better than any scenery any planet had to offer, but he did have a certain fondness for snow, and by the way, Spock, (here he grumbled good-naturedly) that wasn't an invitation to jettison him the next time they're passing Hoth.

James Kirk didn't care what he wore, since he could wear almost anything and not look absurd, and by the way, Spock, while he looks good wearing anything, he looks better wearing nothing (here he winked, and then, when Spock quirked an eybrow at him, blushed furiously).

A fall from a sandstone cliff into the center of a crumbling planet would almost certainly not be fatal for James Kirk, even if Spock weren't literally the best chess player in the corporeal universe.

James Kirk reminded Spock of no one else he had ever met.


	6. Because It's Impossible

**Rating:** T. YES, THAT'S RIGHT, T. Don't too get excited, next chapter goes right back to K+. Err...just bear that in mind when you read the end, and you won't be too mad at me. I hope. Maybe.

**A/N:** Hehehe. Hehehehehe. He, he he, hehehehehe.

I am so evil.

* * *

><p>—<strong>Because It's Impossible—<strong>

—

The twentieth time it happened, Spock was expecting it.

Actually, that was a lie; Spock never expected it. Even though the cold, twisting feeling was now coming early enough to give him nearly thirty seconds of notice before it happened, somehow, it still always came as a surprise.

—

"Ready to begin reunification," Lieutenant Kyle said, his fingers hovering over the transporter controls. Both Captains nodded (or rather, the one on the left nodded; the one on the right blew a kiss to Spock, but he was trying to ignore that one)—

—

"Sorry about that," muttered the Captain. "And how I showed up at your quarters with, er, massage oil right after I got split apart. I didn't mean to—that is, not that..." he trailed off, turning beet red.

"I assure you, Captain, that I do not hold the incident against you. Given the situation, that half of you did not have the ability to...control himself, no matter how you behave normally."

"...wish I behaved that way normally..." mumbled the Captain, almost too low for Spock to hear.

The silence which followed that statement was awkward in an entirely different way.

Spock decided such silences were better left well alone, and resumed.

—

As Mr. Kyle's hand started moving, the horribly familiar twist rolled through Spock's chest like a lungful of icewater.

"No! Stop the transport!"

He pushed Lieutenant Kyle out of the way, but it was too late. The transport had already started, and if it was interrupted, both of the Captain's molecular patterns would be permanently lost. Maybe he could copy the patterns somehow—no, _think logically_, transporter engineers had been trying to work out a means of making pattern backups for decades, Spock could not possibly work out and implement a solution in less than thirty seconds—it had taken one hundred eighteen moves last time, it could not be impossible, _there had to be a way_—

There wasn't. Spock stared blindly at a dent the shape of his hand on the transporter console.

Behind him, Lieutenant Kyle was standing at the comm in the wall, mouth hanging open in a less-than dignified shape (presumably he had been calling Sickbay to report the First Officer's sudden fit of insanity). In front of him, the Captain had almost, but not quite, finished rematerializing; and though he was twice frozen, once by the transporter and once by time, Spock could still tell he was already dead.

He had seen his Captain die nineteen times before, after all. He was something of an expert at this point.

Death stepped (or flowed, either word was appropriate) out of a rip in the air that had appeared, coincidentally enough, right on one of the transporter pads.

"I do not appreciate your poor attempt at humor."

**"You mean how I arrived directly above a transporter pad, presumably to make the statement that even a pseudo-divine being such as myself must arrive using common technology? I understand that in classic human comedy, the juxtaposition of the awe-inspiring and the mundane is considered funny."**

"Yes. I am the only audience you have, however, and thankfully, I do not have a sense of humor."

**"Oh." **Death looked around the interior of the transporter. **"I was actually aiming for that spot beside Mr. Kyle."**

Spock waited. Death sighed, stepped in its strange sliding way down from the transporter pad, and made its usual Pronouncement.

**"James Tiberius Kirk. Born the day named by your people as 2233.04; allotted twenty-eight years and one hundred fifteen days of life; died this day, named by your people as 2261.36. It is already done."**

"I challenge you. I name three-dimensional chess as the challenge."

Death summoned the board and sat down behind the black. **"Then make your move, Spock, first officer."**

—

If Spock had been able to use even the smallest part of his mind to think of anything except the board in front of him, he would now be absolutely certain that Death had let him win the first nineteen games. However, as the entirety of his awareness was focused on sixty-four plain black-and-white squares, he was not capable of that certainty. His thoughts ran at the frantic speed of a dying engine, and that engine was running itself to the ground.

Spock had his king, his queen, and a bishop. Death had his king, his queen, a bishop, and both rooks. Death's black attack lines curved in an invisible helix through the three-dimensional structure of the board, a tightening cage solid enough that Spock could almost touch it.

It was Spock's one hundred forty-first move. And there was no reasonable way for him to win.

**"The best you can hope for at this point is a draw, I believe," **said Death, **"although you are welcome to stare at the board as long as you wish."**

Spock did so.

Eventually he said, in a slightly hoarse voice, "You have cheated. I do not know how, but you have cheated."

**"How could I have cheated, Spock, first officer, when I make all my moves in plain sight?"**

"You always speak my position as if it were part of my name."

**"Isn't it?"**

Spock said nothing, but moved his queen two spaces to the left. Death, in a perfectly legal, perfectly obvious move, took it with a rook.

"That move was not possible."

**"If it were not possible, I could not have made it."** Death paused, then said, in a tone as kind as its starless voice would allow, **"You cannot even hope for a draw, now. You are only postponing the inevitable. Give up; it will be painless for him, I promise."**

"_No_."

And then, in a perfectly legal, perfectly obvious move, Spock, first officer, checkmated Death with only a king and a bishop.

—

Before it left, Death said conversationally, **"I am seriously considering a policy change regarding the formality of these visits, considering how frequent our visits are. It gets monotonous, Pronouncing your Captain all the time when I know I might as well not bother."**

Spock, who was now standing, looked up at the Captain. Death had not yet restarted time and undone the Captain's death. His frozen eyes were still widened slightly, as if it had shocked him to discover that he was not immortal. Then he turned to face Death, who was watching him almost cordially—almost as if they were _friends_.

And with that calm, dead levity that belongs only to people who have already lost everything they had to lose, Spock said, "I do not care what you say when you come to take him. I do not care about the words I say to stop you. I do not care about your policies, so long as they allow the possibility of your failure.

"I do not care that you seem to consider the death of my Captain a social event. I do not care that you have let me win nineteen consecutive so-called 'games', for reasons that I do not understand. I do not care that I do not understand how I won this one. I only care that I win, because you can't have him, and I have found that I care about _nothing_ any more except that."

—

Spock could not believe he had said that out loud.

"I can't believe you said that out loud," said the Captain thickly.

—

Jim's heart was pounding so hard he thought it would explode. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and tried to remember how to breathe normally. All the air in the room seemed to have disappeared, and it was making him dizzy, and—_fuck_. If Spock had said "I want to fellate you until you ejaculate into my mouth," Jim would not be any more turned on than he was now.

Actually, by Spock standards, he practically had.

Somehow, Jim mastered his (entirely inappropriate oh my GOD) reaction enough to open his eyes again, and found that Spock was staring at him with the most perfectly panicked deer-in-the-headlights look he'd ever seen. The only question was:

What was Jim going to do about it?

Really, the answer was quite simple—

He leaned forward (oops, Jim thought giddily as the chessboard hit the floor) and kissed Spock.


	7. In Which All Involved Parties Freak Out

_OH DEAR. Chapter was reposted today after my beta pointed out that I left some things in that were not supposed to be left in, if you know what I mean. That's what I get for posting after just glossing over . Anyway, please disregard anything you saw before that was in [brackets], it wasn't supposed to make it in.  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Rating:<strong> K+ for I don't even know and go read the thing already.

**A/N:** You remember that one part in Plato's Stepchildren? That one part with the dancing and the laughing and the crying, but most especially the laughing and the crying? That part _freaked me out_.

Also, the final chapter gets posted TOMORROW! Woo-hoo!

* * *

><p><strong>—In Which All Involved Parties Freak Out<strong>—

—

Afterwards, Jim was the little spoon, which was perfectly all right by him. Only somebody crazy would object to being the little spoon when the big spoon was Spock.

They lay there in the dark, just being quiet, just being warm together. For once, Jim didn't bother suppressing thoughts like, _this is wonderful, Spock is wonderful, everything is wonderful, this is the most fucking wonderful thing ever_, even though Spock probably knew everything he was thinking because their bare skin was touching...well, almost everywhere.

They had to have a conversation about this soon, Jim knew. It was obvious that Spock had been through one hell of a mindfuck, and that this chess deathmatch stuff had to stop. But "soon" was not "now", and they were both pretty thoroughly exhausted, emotionally and...otherwise.

He was almost asleep when Spock whispered in his ear, "Jim?"

"...fmm?"

"It is 2348. Your shift tomorrow starts at 0800. I will leave to let you sleep." Spock started to untangle his arm from its current position around Jim's waist. Belatedly, Jim realized what he was doing and turned over to wrap himself around Spock more thoroughly. Spock stopped moving.

"Stay. Sleep here tonight. You're exhausted, your rooms connect to mine anyway, it's all right."

Spock was quiet for so long that Jim thought he was asleep when he finally said, " 'All right.' What a vague expression."

Jim started to say, "Yeah, humans are vague and inadequate and just generally inferior, can we go to sleep now?", but there were warning bells going off all over his brain, so he didn't. Instead, he said, "What do you mean?"

"How can it be 'all right'?" Spock's hand tightened on Jim's back. His voice twisted. "There is another away mission in four days, and the next time it happens—the next time—I cannot win again, Jim, I_ know _it is impossible—" Spock cut himself off and turned his head away, so that all Jim could see in the dark was the dim outline of his clenched jaw and shoulders.

Suddenly, "have a conversation soon" became "have a conversation now".

"Spock. _Spock_. I'm here, I'm fine, I'm still alive, now talk to me. Tell me the rest, _right now_. Why can't you win?" Jim said with an air of authority he was most decidedly _not _feeling.

—

The twenty-fifth time it happened was only thirty-seven days ago. Fourteen members of the crew, including the Captain, had caught Rigelian fever during shore leave on starbase twelve; the Captain had caught it first, so his disease had progressed furthest.

Spock didn't know whether or not he would still be able to challenge Death if he was not near the Captain when the Captain died. Spock did not intend to find out. This meant that Spock could not leave Sickbay.

Dr. McCoy was not being very understanding.

"Dammit, Spock, every time I turn around, you're standing there _looming_. It's not good for morale. Don't you have a ship to run?"

"The _Enterprise_ is fully equipped with modern communications technology. This means that the ship can be run effectively from virtually any location with a comm link, which includes Sickbay, though that may have escaped your notice."

"Look, I get that you're just being ornery because you're worried about Jim, but you're not sick and you've got better things to do. This is _my_ sickbay—stop looking at me like that, you'll scare the nurses—"

One of the beds started beeping. The doctor swore, and started to run past Spock to get to one of the patients; Spock did not need to turn around to see who it was, because the ice was back, that cold twisting finger which always came before Death did.

And that meant it was J—the Captain. That meant it was the Captain.

Spock walked (ran) calmly (frantically) to the beeping bed, and said, "What is wrong?"

"_Nothing_, Spock, his heart rate's just gone down a bit, which is normal for this stage of the illness."

"Doctor, listen to me. In thirty-two seconds, he will experience a crisis, and he will not survive unless—"

"I am only going to say this one more time: I am a doctor, I know what I'm doing, get out of my sickbay. You're just getting in the way."

Helpless. Absolutely helpless. Spock stood by the bed, watching the Captain, who was pale and delirious from the fever, and counted the seconds he had left until the world ended.

Five, four, three—

"Spock, I mean it, go—"

—zero.

_Fascinating_, he thought distantly as he watched the air tear itself apart, _the ripping is faintly audible now_.

—

153 moves. A black king. A white king. A white knight. A draw.

Death did not take the Captain, under the pretext that Spock won, since Spock had two pieces left and Death only had one. For some unfathomable reason, Death chose to ignore rule 26.12 of three-dimensional chess.

Rule 26.12 states that, if a chess match is being played for stakes and the match ends in a draw, black wins the stakes.

—

The day before the twenty-sixth time, Spock had played Ensign Chekov, just for curiosity's sake. Before he started playing Death, they had been nearly perfectly matched; playing against the ensign again would tell him how much he had improved.

They played three games. It was two moves to checkmate each time.

—

The twenty-sixth time it happened was nine days ago, on a routine planet survey, although by now the term "routine" was meaningless to Spock. If the Captain was there, it would not be routine.

He had hoped, though, that nothing would happen. The planet had little in the way of weather, and so no potential for lightning or flash floods or poisonous fog; there was no flora, and so no chance of poison; no fauna, and so no chance of animal attack; no sentient life within five light-years, and the ship's systems were all in order as of thirty-three minutes ago (Spock had checked them himself).

But, of course, the feeling came anyway. _Twist_—and Spock started the countdown. If previously established trends held true, he had forty-six seconds.

He looked ahead of him. The Captain was approximately eight meters away, bearing azimuth 21, standing on a small sandstone outcropping of elevation 0.8 meters and silhouetted against the pale purple sky. Spock flipped open his communicator.

"Spock to transporter room, come in."

No response. Of course there wasn't any response.

"Some equipment up there that you need?" the Captain asked.

And then it all went wrong.

—

**"You could not possibly have expected that to work. The boulder's speed was too great to be significantly affected by an object as comparatively small and slow as your body."**

The Captain lay crumpled on the sandstone. There was much less blood than Spock had thought there would be.

**"Why do you still try?"**

Spock did not dignify that with a reply. Instead, he said, "I assumed death would be instant, and that I had the full forty-six seconds to prevent that instant."

**"Assumptions are the enemies of success."**

"I know." Spock looked back at Death. He could almost see the face under the hood now, blurred lines of shadow that were just slightly darker than space.

—

Spock lost.

He had been expecting that, though. He had a logical mind, and logical minds do not plan for success.

Logical minds plan for failure.

—

"You win."

**"You are going to attempt to bargain with me because the research you have done indicates that such bargains can be made."**

"Of course."

**"There is nothing you can offer me which will prevent me from taking him."**

"There is nothing I will not offer you to keep him here."

**"You have nothing I want."**

"You are lying in an attempt to influence me to offer you something better than what I was planning on offering you."

**"Of course." **

Spock felt completely calm; his loss had drained him of all tension. He had no trouble thinking, or gathering his words, as he thought he might.

Absolute hatred has a curiously clarifying effect on one's thoughts.

**"Well, Spock, first officer? What do you offer me?"**

—

"_Spock._ What the hell did you offer it?"

"Isn't it obvious, Jim?" Spock's voice was soft and flat. "It did not have to be something significant. After all, both of us knew that your death was inevitable; extrapolating from your past risk-taking tendencies, whatever I offered could not buy you more than a month or two. Yet it had to be something related to life and death, or else Death would have no interest in it."

Jim felt like he was going to throw up.

"The obvious thing to offer was my potential to have children. I am a hybrid organism; though I am (or rather, was) technically fertile, any children I might have had would probably have needed medical assistance to survive. Additionally, I had no strong desire to become a parent. It was no different than choosing to undergo surgical sterilization, which many people do for other reasons—Jim, please stop, I did not mean to upset you—"

"You _bastard_, don't _ever_ scare me like that again, I thought you'd—sold your soul or something..." Jim rubbed his eyes and took one deep, shuddering breath—

_Shit._

"That's what you're going to do, isn't it? You think I'm going to die in four days, on the next away mission, and then you're going to sell it your soul." Jim had thought it was a little odd that Spock had been so...er, eager (not that he was complaining, of course), but if Spock had thought he was going to die—if he'd thought he'd never get another chance—

"Spock, this has to stop. You aren't going to sell your soul to anybody, ever, and that's a direct order."

Jim said it purely automatically. Over the past sixteen months, there had been enough situations where he had had to order Spock not to do something stupidly self-sacrificing that such orders were almost habit. And obviously it was an empty order, since there wasn't any way to enforce it. So he hadn't thought about how Spock would react to it.

But if he had thought about it, he would never, not if he had eternity, think to expect what happened next.

"Do you really think, Jim," Spock asked, "that my soul is still mine to sell?"

And then he _laughed_.


	8. The Far Better Thing

**Rating:** T for something spoilery I can't tell you about unless you want to be horribly spoiled but it involves SADNESS AND TRAGEDY so consider yourself warned by all the skulls outside the entrance to the pirate cave and if the title doesn't tell you something then _I just can't help you_

punctuation is a luxury in such a time of crisis

also if you see anything in brackets, _ignore it it is irrelevant_

**A/N: **oh god what have I done but don't worry it gets better OR DOES IT WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE

go read the thing already, _before you die_

* * *

><p>—<strong>The Far Better Thing<strong>—

—

It stopped almost as quickly as it had started, only lasting for about a second; but it took longer than that for Jim to place the sound, and not just because the idea of Spock laughing was ridiculous, but because of the sound itself. 'Terrifying' was not adequate to describe it, and neither was 'desolate'. 'Completely, miserably empty' came pretty close, though.

"My apologies," Spock said, in that utterly blank tone of voice that meant 'I am half a step away from strangling somebody against the helm controls'. "I have not been myself lately. Many of the actions I have taken recently are illogical and contradictory." There was a considering pause; then he added clinically, "I suspect I am close to experiencing what human psychologists would call a 'psychotic break'."

If that wasn't the understatement of the fucking _year_.

Jim had been wrong, four hours before (god, everything had been so_ different _then) when he had thought Spock couldn't be that good of an actor. Spock was clearly the most brilliant actor in all of history, because until now, until this very second, Jim had not truly realized how deeply _broken_ Spock was.

For what was certainly not the first time in his life, he found that his mouth was moving without him consciously considering the words he was saying.

"Spock. Please recite Starfleet regulation 12, chapter 4, paragraph 1 for me."

Well, it wasn't the strangest thing he'd ever said in bed before, but it came pretty close. Did he really just imply that he wouldn't...?

_Yes_, Jim thought suddenly. _Yes, I did, and I don't regret it, not for a second, because it's the right thing to do, no matter how I feel about it personally. _

Automatically, Spock recited, " 'The captain, or other ranking officer in command of a starship, is encouraged not to act as part of a landing party on any away mission, routine or otherwise, unless the presence of said captain or ranking officer is required by the mission, or said captain or ranking officer possesses skill and/or experience relevant to the mission which other crewmembers do not. If the captain or ranking officer does act as part of a landing party, said captain or ranking officer is encouraged to take all precautions against injury, capture, etc. outlined in paragraph 2 of this regulation which said captain or ranking officer considers reasonable and/or necessary.' "

"That's the one," Jim said, and quelled the brief urge to tell Spock that it wasn't strictly necessary to say 'slash' out loud every time one said 'and/or'. "From now on, we—and by 'we', I mean me—will be taking that regulation very seriously. Although, just to be fair to myself, if I'd known that I accounted for 58% of the _Enterprise_'s casualties I would have started taking it seriously ages ago."

"You seem to be implying that you are going to start acting more cautiously. Obviously my sanity is more in question than I thought it was."

"You're not crazy, Spock," Jim said, much more flippantly than he felt, since by all accounts Spock actually _was_ a little bit crazy. "I hate to break it to you, since it's your favorite game and I can't think of anyone who needs a hobby more than you, but you're not ever going to play chess again. And if that means I'm going to have to stop acting like some heroically suicidal lemming, so be it."

One beat of silence stretched into three. Finally, Spock said quietly, "Thank you."

"Any time. Now, no more pillow talk, we're going to sleep."

And they did.

—

In the morning, Jim made Spock go to sickbay for a thorough mental and physical evaluation. Physically, Spock was completely fine; mentally, he was a wreck, and a highly anomalous wreck, at that. Bones nearly—no, strike that, he _did_ have a fit when he got the condensed version of the story ("There are parts of his brain lit up that _he didn't even have _six months ago, Jim, but for all I know it just means he's got "Don't Fear the Reaper" stuck in his head!").

The exhaustion was taken care of by ten days of medical leave and heavy meditation—Spock, shockingly, did not object to the forced leave, which said worlds more than brain scans did—but, though the anomalous brain activity subsided, it never entirely ceased.

—

Jim and Spock never played another game of chess, but they did take up Go, and certain other enjoyable interpersonal activities.

Jim decided that he greatly preferred the idea of an Epic Romance to the idea of an Epic Friendship.

—

It was twenty months into the mission before Jim was part of another landing team; he was almost unspeakably proud of himself for lasting a whole four months before declaring his barfighting experience relevant to a mission. When he finally beamed down, he took a full security team with him, and he even managed to restrain himself from calling the seven-foot-tall Teer of the Ten Tribes a "glorified muppet".

—

Six months after that, Jim finally got up the nerve to ask Spock how, exactly, Vulcans did marriage.

As it turned out, Vulcans did marriage the same way they did everything else: _awesomely_.

—

The twenty-seventh time it happened was three months after they got married.

—

Jim had done everything right. _Everything_. Since the revelation that he was only alive because his first officer asked "How high?" when the Grim Reaper said "Jump," he had only been on four away missions. He'd even started _eating right _(ugh), because he took this whole 'keep Spock from going psycho again' thing _seriously_, damn it.

But it had still happened.

They had been sent to help the USS _Reliant_ make repairs to its energy reactors and deflector shield after an encounter with a hostile Romulan vessel. The Romulans had been routed, but the _Reliant_ had suffered severe damage, and didn't have the resources to make the repairs on her own.

It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be safe. It would have been safe, if the _Reliant_ hadn't actually been taken over by Romulans who were broadcasting false distress signals. Almost immediately after the _Enterprise_ had dropped out of warp, the _Reliant_ had fired, and now—

Now there was smoke everywhere, and sickly red light, and panicked shouting, and Jim was lying on the floor, and there wasn't any pain, and that was _not good_, and he really didn't want to look at his stomach because he strongly suspected that if he did he would throw up, and for some reason it was really really hard to breathe.

Spock was by his side almost instantly. Jim tried to sit up, and was not surprised at all when he couldn't.

"Do not move, Jim. There is a support beam in your chest." Spock was white as a sheet, but the hand laced in Jim's hair was completely steady. In the back of his head, Jim felt a telepathic echo from Spock of a cold, twisting feeling. Even though it wasn't something he'd ever felt before, he didn't need Spock to tell him what it meant.

Fuck.

"Spock," Jim tried to say, "promise me—" _promise me you won't die for me, promise me you'll be okay, promise me, goddamn it, because I'm going to die and I need to know_—but it was no good, the words wouldn't come. All he could do was lie there and choke on his own blood.

Spock knew what he meant, though he didn't say anything in response; he just stroked Jim's face with an impossibly steady hand and quirked the corner of his mouth in a strange, small, gentle smile, as if to say _ask me to carry the moon on my back, Jim, for that would be easier for me to do_.

That smile was the last thing Jim saw in his twenty-seventh life.

—

The frantic yelling became silence, the billowing smoke hung frozen in the air, the smell of burning plastic disappeared, and all that existed came to a dead stop.

Spock stood up, straightened his shirt, and slowly turned around.

Death was waiting.

_(It is a far, far better thing—)_

**"He will disagree."**

"He will be alive to do so."

—

Of course, Spock did not immediately give himself up. That would have been foolish. It would also have been foolish to use chess as a challenge again, so instead, Spock challenged him to Go.

It was the shortest game of Go Spock had ever played.

"You win."

**"You are going to offer me your life in exchange for his."**

"Yes. Was that not the purpose of this entire charade? To push me until, finally, I sacrificed myself for him?"

**"You may believe that, if you wish."**

"What other possible reason could you have had?"

**"I don't suppose you would believe that I did it because of quantum?" **

It was a nonsensical statement, so Spock did not reply. Death sighed, stood up, and gestured for Spock to follow it into the hole it had torn in the air.

That gesture was the first thing Jim saw in his twenty-eighth life.

—

Suddenly coming to full consciousness on a bridge full of frozen people, Grim Reapers, and holes into nothingness was, without a doubt, the weirdest thing Jim had ever experienced; but it was not entirely unexpected. In his own brilliant, convoluted way, Jim had a mind just as logical as Spock's.

And, as everyone already knows, logical minds plan for failure.

Spock had said that the reason he could see Death when it came for Jim was because Spock was telepathic, and human enough to be able to see human deaths. He hadn't ever said why he could only see it when Jim died, and not anybody else; it probably had something to do with Destiny, or how they were Fated To Be Together, or some crap like that (not that Jim had any specific argument against being Fated To Be Together, he just objected to the idea of Fate in general.)

At any rate, it had made Jim wonder.

And then when he asked Spock how Vulcans got married, and Spock had said it involved the creation of a telepathic bond, Jim had wondered some more. Specifically, it had made him wonder if a non-telepathic human would be able to see Death if they were bonded to somebody who _was_ telepathic.

Somewhere in the back of his head, this seed of an idea had grown into an actual plan.

Said plan, of course, was now going to be executed.

Jim didn't waste any time. Death was already halfway through the hole in the air, and Spock was following close behind. Neither of them seemed to have noticed that he wasn't stuck frozen on the ground any more.

"Hey," Jim called cheerfully. "Don't I get to challenge that?"

Death calmly stepped back out of the hole. Spock spun around so fast that, had he not been gifted with absurd, gazelle-like grace, he would have fallen over.

**"If you wish," **Death said, not seeming the least bit surprised. **"Name the game."**

"The name of the game," Jim said slowly, "is Fizzbin."

And then Jim grinned.

—

* * *

><p><em>Did you <em>really_ think I could kill them off for good? :P  
><em>

_anyway, a few points that may have confused some of you/never got explained:_

__—_The ending is kind of open, but if you know what Fizzbin is, you know they lived happily ever after. _Fizzbin = awesome game that TOS Kirk pulled out of his ass in order to kick some ass. specific episode: A Piece of the Action. go watch it. it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, right up there with the Nazi BDSM episode (or, if you insist upon its proper name, Patterns of Force)._  
>—Death says it's because of quantum. this is a Discworld reference (technically it's 'cos of quantum', but Death is more sophisticated than that) and basically it's used to explain various unexplainable things.<br>—Death mostly messed with Spock just to kill time and get lulz, but it also may have had some vague idea about taking Spock on as Apprentice Death. maybe. mostly for lulz, though  
>—the Reliant. oh, poor, poor, abused Reliant. Wrath of Khan, go watch it<br>—Go = a strategy game for smart people which is not Chess._

_if you want anything else clarified, ask in review and I will reply to you with answer :3 Love you all, thanks for sticking around til the end, it's been sooooo much fun!  
><em>


End file.
